As pig farms collapse across Canada, a U.K. pork group warned Tuesday that a global bacon shortage now appears “unavoidable.”

The National Pig Association, the chief pork advocate in the bacon-loving British Isles, warned that skyrocketing prices for soy and corn had already begun to dramatically shrink European pig herds, “a trend that is being mirrored around the world.”

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The warning comes fewer than two weeks after Canada’s second- and fourth-largest pig producers filed for creditor protection, leaving as many as 1.5 million pigs in the balance.

“Producers are deciding that [pig farming] just isn’t sustainable, and deciding to empty their barns,” said Gary Stordy, spokesman with the Canadian Pork Council.

The culprit is the U.S. drought. Dry conditions in the midwest last summer affected nearly 90% of U.S. corn fields, instantly kicking up prices by as much as 50%.

You give me the right price, and I will produce as much bacon as you want

“There’s just less corn around,” said Andrew Dickson, general manager of the Manitoba Pork Commission.

For a farmer raising a modest herd of 14,000 pigs, spikes in grain prices have added $213,000 in costs over the next six months, said Mr. Stordy. For larger producers such as Saskatchewan’s Big Sky Farms — which recently entered into receivership — added costs were estimated to be as high as $1-million per week.

“We’re in a crisis that could wipe the industry out in Manitoba, and potentially right across Canada,” Doug Chorney, president of a Manitoba farm group seeking $130-million in government loan guarantees, told interviewer Kelvin Heppner on the Manitoba Farm Journal radio program

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz told a conference of the Canadian Farm Writers Federation in Winnipeg last weekend that keeping up the supply of Canadian hogs is a key priority for the federal government. “We’re working with the pork industry on what the best way to do that is,” he said, according to a post-conference story by Mr. Heppner.

Canada is the world’s third-largest pork exporter, shipping out $2.6-billion of pig products annually, mostly to Japan and the United States. Quebec pig farmers lead the pack, slaughtering eight million hogs in 2010, followed by Manitoba, which slaughtered more than five million.

In the United States, farmers have begun searching for feed alternatives, including rejected candy. “It actually has a higher ratio of fat than actually feeding them straight corn,” Kentucky farmer Joseph Watson told a local TV station.

Unfortunately, such creative solutions are not always available to Canada’s far-flung pig farms. “Whether it’s candy, food scraps or burnt bread, our industry is by nature rural so they can’t truck it in affordably,” said Mr. Stordy.

Although pork is scorned by Muslims, Jews and Rastafarians, it remains the world’s most popular meat, with humans consuming about 100 million tonnes of pigs per year. “It’s because the Chinese eat so much,” said Mr. Dickson.

As the bacon barterer, I promise to engage the possible bacon shortage with smarts, savvy and deliciousness

However, Chinese consumers will be somewhat insulated from the coming shortage by frozen stockpiles of pork maintained as a kind of strategic pork reserve by the Chinese government.

In Canada, within five to six months, estimates the Canadian Pork Council, consumers will start to see the effects of North America’s pig herd declines.

A Sept. 17 commentary by Genesus, a Manitoba-based swine breeder, estimates that by the summer of 2013, hog prices will be “the highest in history.”

While Canadian supermarket shelves will never be empty of pork, consumers will need to pay more for their fix of bacon or sausage-links.

“Is there less pork in the world? Probably, but I wouldn’t call it a shortage,” said Mr. Dickson. “You give me the right price, and I will produce as much bacon as you want.”

On Sunday, comedian Josh Sankey arrived in Los Angeles to cap off a coast-to-coast journey financed entirely by bartering packages of bacon from a refrigerated trailer. Dubbed the Bacon Barter, the two-week journey was launched as a publicity stunt for Oscar Meyer.

“As the bacon barterer, I promise to engage the possible bacon shortage with smarts, savvy and deliciousness!!” Mr. Sankey wrote in a Tuesday afternoon Tweet.

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